


storm

by suzukiblu



Series: push and pull [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Childbirth, Death, F/M, Family, Hakoda (Avatar) is a Good Parent, M/M, Mild Gore, Multi, Not Canon Compliant - The Legend of Korra, Not Compliant with Avatar Comics, Polyamory, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25268632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suzukiblu/pseuds/suzukiblu
Summary: They find the Fire Nation woman in the middle of a storm.
Relationships: Bato/Hakoda/Kya (Avatar)
Series: push and pull [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1830643
Comments: 108
Kudos: 1339
Collections: ATLA Polyamory Fics





	storm

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a looooong time ago as part of an AU meme back on LJ, and today was convinced to pretty it up and post it here. There’s actually more where this came from, I’m just not sure I’ve got the patience to get it all to postable quality, hah. I figured I’d put up the beginning and then add more to the series if people were interested. If not, well . . . then I’ll hopefully still add more to the series, it’ll just be a lot slower. Full disclosure!

They find the Fire Nation woman in the middle of a storm, wild with fever and with her water already broken. Hakoda can’t leave her—not with Kya so far along herself. Even staring down at the snow-covered spill of red robes, the only face he sees is hers, and he knows it’s no different for Bato than it is for him. 

They take her back to the village, back to their tent. Kya wakes up wide-eyed and wild-haired and rushes to help as he and Bato help the Fire Nation woman stumble inside. The woman is barely conscious, and babbles strange, senseless things— _no no no it can’t come NOW, the stars are BAD now—don’t tell don’t tell he’ll FIND us—Grandfather, Grandfather, please please protect my child_ —and it all blurs into one mad rush and then she falls to the fur-lined floor and dies, right there. 

Hakoda hesitates.

Kya does not. She lunges forward and slices through thick fabric and taut skin with the whalebone knife Hakoda carved her for their wedding and tears the child right out of its mother’s dead belly. It wails.

She cradles it.

Hakoda stares down at a tiny curl of Fire Nation-pale skin and Fire Nation-dark hair and Fire Nation- _bright_ eyes and thinks _what have we done?_

Its mother’s blood is everywhere.

Kya sings a little song, soft and sweet, and unwinds her parka in the dark and pulls the baby into the warm depths of it and guides it to her already milk-full breast, and Hakoda understands that some things are destiny. Kya is the only pregnant woman in the entire village, the only woman whose milk is in, the only woman who _could_ replace the corpse on their floor. That he and Bato were the ones to find the Fire Nation woman . . .

He is not one to question the spirits. 

Hakoda and Bato wrap the body in bloody furs and take her out past the edges of the storm to the plains. They burn her. It is what a Fire Nation woman would want, Hakoda thinks, although he can’t know for certain. 

He keeps the gold ornament in her hair. It’s not worth anything, not among their people, but there is the child to think of. Perhaps it will be enough to buy it into an Earth Kingdom orphanage.

But by the time they come back, Kya’s nerves have sent her into early labor.

Hakoda looks at Bato, who looks back at him, and a thousand things are said in that moment’s silence. They are men, it is not their place to help in women’s things—but even panting through the pain of contractions, Kya cradles the Fire child as gently as she would her own blood.

No one else was foolish enough to be out tonight. And even with the look of the boy . . . even with the look of the boy, no one has seen the Fire Nation down here since Hakoda’s mother was a young woman. 

They can bury the ornament. No one would ever have to know.

Kya breathes, harsh and heavy, and both men hit their knees beside her.

“Tell us what to do,” Hakoda says, very quietly, and Kya laughs at him, breathless with pain. 

“Get me your mother. And think of an extra name,” she says, and moans as another contraction overcomes her. Bato runs for Kanna and Hakoda stays at Kya’s side, holding onto her. 

Somehow, the baby is born. Too soon, certainly too small, but then, so is the Fire child, and curled up side by side in Kya’s arms . . .

“They remind me of the North,” Kanna says, touching both boys’ foreheads. If they had a son, they meant to name him Sokka, but now they have two. 

Fraternal twins are lucky in the Water Tribe, Hakoda remembers in something faintly akin to amusement. Or perhaps it’s hysteria. But they are, and the less alike the better. His people will see their chief siring such dissimilar sons as a blessing from the spirits. The Fire Nation does not come here. There is no other explanation but that the boys are his and Kya’s, he reminds himself, assures himself. No one will doubt his word as chief. 

His mother tells them a story.

Hakoda hopes for strong boys, because they will need to be, and names them Tuikka and Lanook. He carves them both a totem and ties them into prayer bags, things to tuck into their blankets for now and be worn later, until they are old enough to find their own spirit guides and protect themselves without their parents’ defenses. The charms are simple symbols etched into flint chips and the bags will never be opened. Tuikka’s is the usual; Hakoda’s wolf guide on one side and Kya’s seahawk on the other. Lanook’s . . . cannot be the usual, and so for him Hakoda carves an imitation of the gold ornament and the symbol for “great-grandfather”. It is the best he can do, and he can only hope the boy’s great-grandfather was something truly great. 

The village can be lied to, for the sake of a child’s life, but never the spirits. 

He ties the bags. He tucks them into the boys’ blankets. 

And while Kya sleeps the sleep of a battle well-fought and Bato cleans up from the birth and death that their tent has seen tonight, Hakoda stares at their curled-up sons and tries to remember if Lanook’s eyes had been blue before.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr!](http://suzukiblu.tumblr.com/)


End file.
